


Violent Sun

by eggsinskillet



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, a continuation of that one au, but Harrow is the only one unaware it is not real, guessed a lot of Cohort stuff sorry, not super canon complient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:53:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggsinskillet/pseuds/eggsinskillet
Summary: Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Black Anchorite and the first Ninth soldier to ever grace the Cohort in millennia, is partnered with a dashingly handsome and incredibly annoying coffee slinger. First paragraph is from Harrow the Ninth.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 29
Kudos: 78





	Violent Sun

_ The coffee adept was a girl Harrowhark had never seen before, though she must have been part of their training platoon. With the plain shirtsleeves and apron, and a cloth slung over the shoulder obscuring her insignia, it was impossible to tell her affiliation: the arms beneath the rolled up sleeves betrayed lean, taut muscle, a little dewy with sweat and steam from the mess. But it was the face that sent her neurons in a thalergetic spin. When Harrowhark looked at that face, she found a curious heat travelling all the way up from the pit of her pylorus to the high collar of her Cohort shirt. It then traversed her cheeks, her nose, her brow, her temples. The other officer smiled a firm-jawed, long, crooked smile at her; Harrow was electrified by the fact that beneath the hastily brushed crop of red hair those eyes were-- _

\-- Yellow. 

Harrowhark inhaled instinctively as the other girl beamed at her from behind the mess counter. Behind her, Chatur let out an irritated  _ hum _ and gestured to the menu. Harrowhark quickly pulled the black Ninth hood up to hide her doubtlessly pink ears - and she thanked God for her religious exemption for it now - and then realized, inexplicably, that she had never even  _ had _ coffee before. There certainly wasn’t any in Drearburh, and her terminal avoidance of the mess hall meant she had never even  _ seen  _ this side of the hall.

“Sorry - why don’t you go first, Lieutenant Chatur, Lieutenant Tettares?” She bit out, perfectly capable of stopping the stutter that almost betrayed her. Chatur & Tatteres stepped forward almost immediately, glancing at her sidelong. Harrowhark prayed the hood was dark enough to hide her face.

“(This is what you get for talking to the _ninth recruit!_ )”  
“(I didn’t expect her to be a _total_ weirdo...) I’ll have a caramel macc-”

Harrow gracefully pretended not to hear the first part, and was gracelessly bored with the second, as Chatur rattled off possibly one of the longest and most confusing sentences anyone in the universe had ever heard anyone speak. She squinted at the menu - and tried not to look at the girl behind the counter, as her out-of-focus, beyond-toned back flexed under the thin Cohort whites. Harrow looked at the menu, but the words were all blurry shapes that might as well have been  _ runes. _ The girl’s forearm was a bit shiny, probably sweating from the steam, and she used some force to tamp the loamy-looking grounds into the machine. Harrowhark’s vision swam.  _ Hazelnut latte, pourover, americano -  _ Her brain essentially melted when she read  _ Affogato, _ which sounded like some sort of obscure, Eighth forbidden word for sex -  _ Espresso shot, turkish coffee,  _ the girl behind the counter is handing them their drinks,  _ light roast, _ they are walking away,  _ dark roast,  _ oh God, she’s looking right at her.

“Let me guess?” The girl smiled that bright, crooked smile again, this time just for Harrow. “You like it... _ black? _ ” Harrowhark immediately regretted the sort of fluttering the girl had brought to her chest cavity. The other girl winked, and then at her reaction - which, Harrow knew, must have looked somewhere between disgust and pity - and shrugged. “Can’t win ‘em all. What’ll it be?”

“I’ll have a -  _ latte. _ ” The word tasted like what she assumed a very sour, very stupid-looking lemon would have tasted like. She awaited the mystery beverage as the line behind her mercifully cleared out, just Chatur and Tettares trying and failing not to burn their tongues on the white cups in their hands.

“So-” The coffee adept scooped some of the dirty looking grounds into the same machine as before. “You’re the lieutenant from the Ninth, right?”

“Yes. How did you know that?” The other girl glanced pointedly down at the black enamel pip at her collar.  _ Of course,  _ Harrow thought, struck by the idea that she may have some kind of reputation besides  _ freak nun _ in the Cohort. Rather dumbly, she said, “Oh, right.”

“What’s it like, then? Ever been in space before?” The girl poured some frothy white liquid into a cup, steam rising up to damp her cheeks. When Harrow hesitated, she said- “I’ve never been to the Ninth, although I’ve been  _ pretty  _ much everywhere else in Dominicus. I  _ have _ seen some, um, scandalous renditions of Ninth house nuns, though. Gotta say, you don’t look the part.”

Ah, so when she opened her mouth, she was like  _ that. _ Harrow regretted even more her reaction to meeting the girl. But when her eyes turned back on her again, those brilliant, radiant, morning-sun golden eyes, she felt the heat begin to creep up her neck again.  _ Damn it all. _ There was something so incessantly familiar about them, too, although she was certain she had never seen someone with eyes like that in the Ninth House. It was, at this moment, that she realized she had been staring entirely too long again - the girl’s smile faltered slightly, as she capped the lid hard on the steaming cup. 

“I- I can’t say I’ve ever been before, no. I’ve never even been off the Ninth,” she said ruefully, unable to stop the bitter tinge to her words. The girl’s eyebrow quirked up, almost comical. She ran a hand through her auburn hair.

“Well then, we’ll have to break you in.” Another wink. “Show you all the sights and sounds of the Cohort! Gideon, pleased to meet you.” She held out her hand - a practice which Harrowhark found  _ very _ contrived and strange, but one she learned nonetheless before joining - and when she took it, the girl, Gideon, very nearly broke her fingers with how hard she clamped back.

“That would be... _ nice, _ ” Harrow said, with all of the inflection of someone who did not, in fact, think it would be nice. In an attempt to save  _ some  _ semblance of her dignity, she decided to take a drink of the, erm, latte, and immediately choked on the scalding liquid, feeling it travel up her sinuses and - oh god - launch unceremoniously out of her nose. Gideon’s shocked and bemused expression was hidden as she turned to lean inconspicuously on the counter’s edge, clearly trying to hold in the sobbing laughter that was wracking her body.

Harrow did, at that moment, wish the Emperor Undying were here to strike her down personally. But she would have no small mercy such as that. And, really, despite no small amount of it currently residing in her sinuses, the drink was quite good. The girl - Gideon - on the other hand, was slapping the counter in silent, suffering laughter, and Harrow had had enough shame for the hour. She didn’t bother with a pleasantry, simply turned and picked her way over to the Fourth recruits, currently sucking down their strange coffee beverages on a mess hall bench.

“Y’know, we thought you were kind of scary,” the girl said as Harrow slid into the mess bench. 

“Yeah,” said the boy. “But now we know you’re actually human, cuz you shot coffee out of your nose in front of that girl.”

“ (Don’t tell her that, she might break all of your bones and then put them back  _ the wrong way) _ _ ” _

_ “ _ (Oh  _ come on,  _ that’s just something they would tell us so we’d go to bed early, it’s not true) ”

“I can hear you, and it’s true.” Harrow said, shooting them a withering look. “I might even put them in backwards.” 

They left fairly quickly after that, stumbling over nervous little “ _ sorry _ ”s. Harrow finished her latte in silence - which, she had to admit, was honestly  _ delicious _ . A warm drink was not a luxury afforded to Ninth House members; the Reverend Daughter herself a picture of Ninth nunnery, she dare not dream of it. But it was not the Ninth house - and she had never felt beholden to her role, and her parents, besides, were taking fine care of the place while she was gone, and no one would ever know. So she enjoyed her latte, and then as she picked her way down the mess hall to the dreary, singularly occupied bunk in the quarters that said Ninth, she thought about that girl’s eyes - those golden, overfamiliar eyes. She wondered, then, where she had seen them before.

The next day was certainly more interesting than the last - the bell awoke her at 0600, the sixth hour of the very pointless 24-hour cycle all days ran on in the Cohort (“Something something Dominicus, something something The First,” the commander had said, the  _ something something _ being the explanation for the stupid idea, which Harrow had not listened to at all) and Harrow rose from her nest of black vestals, shimmied into the cohort whites,  _ very  _ comfortingly nestled the black hood about her shoulders, and then marched down the hall to the training facility.

“Lieutenant Nonagesimus,” Her fellow lieutenant nodded as she entered the door, a frailish girl of a necro build, dark hair, dark eyes, standing straight as a board. Lieutenant Deuteros, first name unknown, Harrow’s sergeant and previously captain of the Second, all at the tender age of 26. Harrow had not  _ disliked _ Deuteros, so much as  _ ignored  _ Deuteros, which seemed to suit the both of them just fine. In her short early weeks on  _ The Emperor’s Dominion _ , they had interacted all of twice beyond pleasantries - once to introduce herself, the next to clarify that Harrow had come to the Cohort alone _. _ Harrow found, with smug satisfaction, that the older girl had nothing to teach her about necromancy. Harrow had excelled in the day-to-day ossial quizzes, anatomy -  _ aced _ , she could do it with her eyes closed. She surprised herself by even being passable at flesh necromancy, though it did not concern her much as it was not her specification and the Cohort was  _ all _ about specification. That is why it surprised her when Deuteros awkwardly saluted and then said, “At attention, cadet. There is something we’d like to talk to you about. Please, follow me.”

Harrow trailed awkward after the girl, winding down white hallways adorned with the beautiful bones of fallen Cohort soldiers, through doorway after doorway.

“As you know, _most_ necros join the Cohort in pairs, or are paired off as Junior Soldiers.” Deuteros began. (Harrow did not know that, and did not really know anything about the Cohort at all, if she was being honest with herself) “Uniqueness of the Ninth sending a soldier at all aside, it is also quite unusual for an officer who has attained the status you have on her lonesome to not have a cavalier. In fact, Nonagesimus, you are the _only_ Lieutenant who ever passed exams without one. How you did it is frankly baffling.” The lieutenant shook her head.

“And this means?” Harrow said flatly, already mostly sure of what it meant.

“It means we’ve assigned you a partner, Lieutenant. She matches your skills well. Though her presence here is, erm...nepotistic in nature, I assure you she is perfectly capable as a cavalier.” Deuteros paused outside a door, sliding a blank keycard in. Nepotistic nature aside, the idea of having to work with someone who she had never met filled Harrow with a sense of foreboding, though nothing could prepare her for what sat beyond the cold, white door.

The placard read  _ First Bunkers _ , and the room inside was completely barren, a mirror to her own, row upon row of empty bunks save one in the corner that seemed to have it’s own radius of filth: an unmade bed, magazines and comic books spread across the floor, the adjacent bed had some kind of macgyvered pull-up bar attached to it - and sitting in a nest of discarded clothes was the cat-eyed girl from yesterday, who looked up from the sword she was polishing with a mute confusion.

“ _ Damn it all,” _ Harrow muttered.

“What was that?” Deuteros asked.

“I said...wow, she’s tall.” Harrow said. It was a good save, because the girl  _ was  _ tall, and when she stood up and saluted Deuteros, the Lieutenants eyes barely came to her chin. Harrow’s field of vision was somewhere in the chestal region, so she looked somewhere else.

“It’s the coffee virgin nun!” The girl said, that same crooked smile lighting up her face in ways that Harrow did  _ not  _ want to think about right now. “Wait- Hang on, Deuteros,  _ my necro? _ ”

“Yes, Gideon. Your... _ necro.” _ The girl turned to Harrow. She could have sworn she imagined it, but the girl looked apologetic. “Gideon is the only soldier of the First. Though it’s unusual to pair necros and cavs from other Houses, an exception was made for the two of you, because a mismatched pair is better than none at all.”

_ A mismatched pair indeed,  _ Harrow thought miserably as the girl sheathed her sword and then clambered over the wreckage that was her bunk area. She noted, distastefully, that some of the magazines were not of the upstanding variety.

“With all due respect, Lieutenant Deuteros,” she began, searching for the right words to get her out of this. “I’ve shown time and time again that I can handle myself over the past few weeks, and I would be perfectly capable on the field without a cavalier. Is there anyone I can speak to about this?”

“With all due respect to  _ you, _ Reverend Daughter, I would consider this a high honor, as it came stamped with approval from His Majesty himself.” Deuteros bit back. “And I would not question the abilities of His daughter.” Harrow paused at that. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, because words were  _ not  _ happening right now. After a tense moment, Harrow managed:

“So that’s…”

“Yes,” Deuteros said grimly, eyeing the girl as she kicked various pornographies under her bed, then put a dirty shirt over them. “Your cavalier is Her Imperial Highness. I’ve been given instruction to let you two off duty for the rest of the morning so you can get to know each other. Godspeed.” Deuteros left.

Harrow had expected, even welcomed, loneliness when she made her choice to leave the Ninth - now it seemed she would not even have the luxury.

“So…” Harrow said.

“So…” Gideon said back. They were quiet.

“You don’t just make coffee?” Harrow asked eventually.

“Coffee is kind of my side chick. My main girl,” - she pulled the pearly looking, two-handed sword from its sheath at her back - “Is _swords._ And fighting is kind of my other main chick. Or side chick. I lost count, as one does.” Harrow only managed to keep the eyeroll internal because Deuteros’ voice saying _Her Imperial Majesty_ was still reverberating in her skull.

“And I know you know  _ me, _ ” Gideon was looking at her expectantly. “But I think you forgot the most important half of meeting people, which is introducing  _ yourself.  _ So please, Miss Nun, do me the honors?”

“Lieutenant Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House.” The well-rehearsed words rolled easily from her tongue, words she’d spoken hundreds of times throughout her short twenty-two years of life. Back home the words would be followed by the clicking of prayer beads and fervent prayer, nuns with their noses to the floor. Here they were followed by a nervous stutter and deferment, because everyone had been warned of the Black Anchorite, the first Ninth soldier sent in a thousand years. Gideon just looked at her dumbly.

“A bit of a mouthful,” she said. “I’ll call you Harrowhark, and you can just call me Gideon.”

“No title, no last name?” Harrow mused aloud.

“Technically Gideon the First, but that makes people weird, so just Gideon is fine.”

“Alright, Just Gideon,” Harrow muttered.

“Ah!” The girl clapped a hand to her shoulder, which almost knocked Harrow’s reedy body to the floor. “You  _ do _ have a sense of humor!”

“Loathsome as it is to admit, you do as well.” Harrow felt the smallest, most fleeting smile across her lips. She pursed them instead. Still, Gideon’s golden gaze fell upon her heavy; like clockwork, she felt that curious heat travel up her neck again. She looked away, shuffled to sit on one of the many abandoned First beds. She admitted to herself, a bit wearily, that she  _ did  _ have several questions for Gideon - That her mysterious origin story was one Harrow was itching to hear, what The Emperor Undying (her father!) was like, how she had come to be a soldier instead of the heiress she was born. But Harrow did not ask any of those questions. She stood up, patted the packet of grave dirt at her chest, and then said:

“How well can you fight?”

It was like she’d said a magic word, because Gideon was on her feet in seconds, sword poised, feet set in a perfect fighting stance, smile lighting up her face like a Christmas tree.

“Wanna see?” Gideon said. Harrow raised her palms in the necromantic gesture for  _ don’t fuck with me _ \- she didn’t need to say anything else.

Movement exploded as Harrow sent forward seven constructs.  _ Impress her. Make her fear you.  _ The blood sweat was already breaking at her brow, running down her cheek. Gideon blew through them as quickly as she’d made them, a spray of hot bone and osseous powder coating the both of them. From the chips sprung skeletal arms, their metacarpals pulling at Gideon’s clothes, dragging her to the ground. She struggled beneath them, shattering several of them with the butt of her sword as they pinned her legs to the floor - she turned and outmaneuvered them as they reached for her wrists, brute-forcing the ones pawing at her ankles to dust, just  _ smashing  _ them with her elbow. Harrow felt a trickle of blood run from her nose as Gideon righted herself, sword raised.

“You’re good,” she said, brushing chalky dust from her arms. “But you can’t keep  _ this  _ bitch down- Hey!”

The hulking skeleton behind her pinned her arms to her chest and pulled her down. Harrow melted the construct into heavy, dense rings of bone and fused them to the floor. Gideon’s sword fell from her hand as she struggled, then stopped, glowering at Harrow from under that messy crop of red hair.

“That was cheap,” She said.

“Cheap wins you battles,” Harrow said airily. “Cheap keeps you alive.”

“ _ Cheap _ gets you toilet duty for a week in the soldier’s training hall.” Gideon huffed. She struggled to sit up, but Harrow set a booted foot on her chest and pushed her back down, pleased with herself. It wasn’t as showy as she’d have liked it to be, but it got the point across. Harrow Nonagesimus was not one to be messed with. When she looked down though, Gideon was smiling at her. Harrow cocked an eyebrow.

“I just never expected being chained up and stepped on by a Ninth nun would happen outside of my dreams _ ,” _ She said huskily. Harrow made an embarrassing, strangled sort of yelp.

“I will see  _ you _ ...at training. We are  _ not  _ becoming friends, so don’t treat me like one.” Harrow hissed. “This discussion is  _ over.  _ And don’t forget I beat you, and I could take you in battle any time I want.”

“Harrowhark will take me anytime she wants then, note made.”

A skeleton almost punted Gideon clean across the room as Harrow tore down the hallway.

_ Stupid, stupid!  _ She paused for a moment to lean against the Ninth quarters door.  _ Why this, why now? I’ve done enough on my own to prove myself.  _ It was true that Gideon had been a worthy opponent - her nose actually bleeding during their fight had proved that. But it was the way the other girl looked at her - like she was human, like she was not the Reverend Daughter, like she was not something to be feared - that had shaken Harrow. Her reputation preceded her here, made it so easy to carry on the way she always had; a beacon of loneliness, a dark blotch on the hallways of The Emperor’s Dominion. But Gideon The First did not  _ care  _ about that, that stupid crooked smile, those beautiful eyes. Harrow felt weak in her presence, and weakness was no trait she wished to possess. 

The day in, day out of a cavalier and their necromancer were spent intertwined; their moment separated were to train for rare instances when they would leave each other's side, usually focused on reconvening. She’d been so pleased with herself to have found a loophole: simply to come alone, be the only Ninth soldier, and become the greatest singular necromantic entity to ever grace the Cohort. This was supposed to be her chance, her final moment to carve a legacy for the failing Ninth House. Now it would be spent roaming the galaxy with a meathead cracking sex jokes for all of eternity. Harrow banged a white-gloved hand on the plex, feeling thoroughly cursed by the universe’s little injustices.

“Lieutenant...Harrowhark, right?” A gentle voice drew Harrow from her reverie. She glared at the soft-statured girl, leaning waifish on a brute of a man. “Sorry to bother you, but is something...wrong?” Harrow said nothing, opting instead to affect a mask of pure disdain. Apparently not one to take a hint, the girl continued.

“To walk in a beautiful dream...to pull the wool over your own eyes is unwise, Harrowhark,” The side of her mouth was quirked up in a small smile, all conspiratorial, as though she was about to tell Harrow a secret. “But if you’re having problems with that cav of yours, I know her well.” She extended a hand.  _ Again with the handshakes,  _ Harrow thought bitterly as she felt the girl’s fragile, birdlike bones against her gloves. Her hands were nearly as small as Harrow’s.

“Lieutenant Septimus, though you can call me Dulcinea,” She regarded Harrow with shockingly blue eyes. “And this luck is my cav, Protesilaus.” The hard-muscled man waved. Harrow wondered how this girl had come to be a Lieutenant herself; she looked as though standing required nominally more effort than she possessed. The pip at her collar denoted her of the Seventh.

“Charmed,” she said. “To put it lightly, yes- I am having trouble believing Gideon is the correct choice for me. Not because she’s...Gideon, but because she’s a cavalier. I don’t believe I need one to succeed, I have succeeded on my own thus far with no issue.”

“Everyone’s heard of the wicked nun from the Ninth, her included, I’m sure.” Dulcinea said easily. “She may not be on speaking terms with her father, but she has a certain sway around here based on title alone. If she didn’t want to be assigned as a cavalier, she wouldn’t have been. But she’s never been the type of person to pull rank. All I’m saying is - she’s one of our best, and she’s been waiting for a chance for a while. Give her a chance.” Harrowhark worried her lip between her teeth, biting at the cracked skin. She leaned her head against the white plex of the wall and closed her eyes for a moment.

“Alright,  _ fine. _ I’ll give her a chance,” she relented. And then: “How did you know my name?”

But Dulcinea was already gone.

Harrowhark made her way down the narrow hallways, winding through passages, until she reached the training hall. A quick glance at the digital clock said she was a few minutes early; she slipped inside quickly, nearly slamming into Gideon’s chest. She seemed unphased by Harrow’s walkabout, that infuriating smile pulling at her mouth again.

“Ready, my midnight queen?” She did a mock bow.

“ _ Don’t  _ even start,” Harrow said. Gideon’s hands flew up.

“Alright, alright,” She said with a shrug. They worked easily through the daily drills; working with someone was challenging for Harrowhark, but nothing she couldn’t handle. She was surprised to learn they  _ did  _ work well together, lingual squabbles aside, and they fell into a rhythm together that felt like destiny. It was with no small relief that Harrowhark slid into bed that night, burrowing between the layers of black sheets, into her fever-hot cocoon. She was filled with the distinct feeling - something she realized, grimly, that she had maybe  _ never  _ felt - that everything was going to be okay.

In the coming weeks, they fell into a sort of rhythm - Harrow’s door would slide open ten minutes before waking, and the hulking silhouette of Gideon would rouse her from her nest and hand her a coffee, which a tired and frustrated Harrow would drink. Gideon would leave and Harrow would get dressed, stippling the face paint on in a practiced motion. She would walk the halls to the training room, where Gideon waited; some days they’d train apart, but mostly together. The other necromancers and their cavaliers, she knew only in passing; at the end of the day, she wandered the ship’s narrow halls, mentally mapping it out. Some nights were spent in Gideon’s lonely First quarters, rolling her eyes as she did comically flex-heavy pull ups. It was in this simple rhythm that they two fell; they asked for nothing more, nothing less. They did not push their boundaries, content to their time together, and time apart.

That is, of course, until the squadron bulletin went up: Harrow did not recognize a single name of the ten on her and Gideon’s list, though she had not expected to - Lieutenant-level necromancer and cavalier pairs were assigned to lower-ranking soldiers they did not cross paths with often. Their ship-out would be soon; in just a day’s time, to a foreign planet that was classified as ‘unruly’. Being a necromancer-led pair, Harrow and Gideon were assigned to the second wave; they would enter the field after the initial soldier-led charge, after the initial thanergy bloom was complete.

“Exciting, isn’t it,” Harrow said as unaffected as she could, though the memo had set her neurons blazing. Gideon made a slight humming noise beside her, arms crossed, rocking on the heels of her feet. Harrow turned her head up to look at her; Gideon’s expression was unreadable. She slowly, pointedly turned, and to her revulsion Gideon took Harrow’s small hands in her own, carefully, almost lovingly. Harrow felt a flush creep over her cheeks.

“Gideon?” She said.

“Let’s go,” Gideon said. “To my bunk.” Harrow’s head spun and she felt the flush deepen considerably as Gideon pulled her down the hall, her calloused fingers rough even over Harrow’s gloves.

“Sit,” Gideon said when they entered the room; Harrow’s heart was beating so hard she could hear it in her ears. She sat on the bed. “I want you…” Harrow breathed in sharply. “...To know what’s going to happen when we reach the field.”

“Oh  _ thank God,”  _ Harrowhark said, more than a little desperately.

“I don’t - I honestly don’t even know why they let you into this contrived, stupid place, when it doesn’t even really seem like you understand how the Cohort works. And you’re a  _ lieutenant!  _ Harrow, your brain is huge, and it’s cute to think you imagine yourself as such a main character. Anyway - we're a second wave squadron; we’re not going into a colonized planet. We’re going into an  _ un _ colonized planet. I’ve had a-” here, Gideon dropped her voice to nearly a whisper. “-I’ve had a theory that maybe the Empire is not colonizing planets for the good of the universe.”

“Gideon,” Harrow said sharply. “Are you blaspheming in my presence?”

“No- Maybe? Just listen to me,” Gideon ran her fingers through her hair. “It’s going to be dark, there’s going to be a lot of blood, a lot of murder. I don’t...I made a promise to myself never to take an innocent life, if I ever was deployed. The day is coming now, soon, and I intend to keep that promise.”

“You can’t win a war by being morally upstanding,” Harrow said quietly.

“You can try,” Gideon said.

“Well, Gideon, you can’t possibly be saying you’ll abandon me in the field,” Harrowhark said, suddenly afraid that was exactly what Gideon was saying.

“No,” Gideon said with a slow, small laugh. “Never have, never will.”

“Then we’ll meet it together,” Harrowhark said. “But Gideon - know this, I will not betray my Emperor. I will not betray my House. Restoring the glory of the Ninth is the most important thing in the universe to me. It is the reason for my existence.”

“No one has a reason for their existence,” she snorted.

“I do.” The silence grew between them until, uncomfortably, quietly, Gideon said:

“Whatever happens tomorrow, whatever we see, I’ll be your cavalier until the end. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Harrowhark said, and suddenly she was very tired. A headache thrummed behind her eyes. “Whatever happens.”

Strapped into the flank ship with ten other soldiers, Gideon and Harrowhark eyed each other with the uneasy stillness of two people responsible for the lives of many others; Harrow and five young necromancers on one side - Gideon and five more lively-looking soldiers on her right. Some of the soldiers looked antsy, ready for a fight, and Harrowhark recognized a glassy fear in the eyes of the youngest ones.

It was nothing like how she’d imagined her first time stepping into the heat of battle had been - she had felt childish as she imagined her triumph, the accolades she would be given for her skill on the field, the strong, faceless hands of the Emperor Undying himself congratulating her. She had felt foolish then, in her girlish fantasies; now she would have given almost anything to feel the same, to be blessedly in the dark about the suffering wrought by the Empire. For when they had stepped from the ship, the images of a glorious, righteous fight faded quickly as the purple-tinged atmosphere of a foreign star burned high above them; the ground below them ran red with a slick of blood. The native creatures, big boundless mammals with tight corded muscles, the sheen on their skin rugged and mountainous, fought with claws and teeth. They were gnashing and tearing at the soldiers, cutting them down as they lashed their swords. The blood of the Cohort mingled with the blood of the planet's inhabitants and flowed into a gruesome river. Harrow could feel the thanergy blooming from the bodies, and with grim understanding, she realized it should not have been like this, but it was; the gears of the empire were greased with blood. Though she had been well aware how the initial thanergy bloom the Cohort set for the necromantic Lieutenants worked, to see it with her own eyes- she saw only a genocide.

She realized with a start Gideon was looking at her, and an understanding passed between them - that they had both, somehow, decided their betrayal, that they had sensed the wrongness of it all. Harrowhark realized this, and as her heart throbbed with the understanding of it, she also realized the retribution she would face if she did not stay her hand. The Ninth was surrounded by death; she could contribute a little more to the forsaken universe for the glory of her House.

“To attention,” she said, squashed the tremor of her voice. Gideon looked surprised, but rose with the rest. “March on, to battle. For the Ninth!”

The crew erupted, echoing hollars for their own houses. Harrowhark descended from the ship, robes billowing; she threw chips of bone from her pockets and spawned the densest, largest constructs she could manage. She was surprised as she flexed her hands what a river of death could do for her necromancy. She had not even broken a sweat.

“Harrow,” Gideon called after her as they walked down the ramp.

“We must do our sworn duty.” Harrow said.

“ _ Harrow _ ,” Gideon caught her arm, letting go when Harrow flinched under her touch.

“We  _ must _ . For God, the Emperor Undying, for my House, for all its failures.”

“These creatures look - I don’t know, they don’t  _ look _ like they’re attacking. You can tell when someone is attacking and when they’re just scared.  _ Look.” _ And it was true; the rock-hide animals were being mowed down by the soldiers, their stances defensive in nature. It churned Harrow’s stomach in a strange way; the Ninth was surrounded by death, by suffering, but never had she experienced the cause of suffering by her own hand. But to not fight would be to give it all up, for her House’s sacrifice to mean nothing. Gideon’s judgement, her honor, twisted to anger in Harrow’s chest, and before she could stop herself she had her hands wrapped in the girl’s shirt, dragging her forward to meet her gaze.

“I will not betray everything this Empire has become  _ so  _ easily as you,” Harrow hissed. Gideon’s expression was stunned; then her gaze hardened, and Harrow felt a twinge of guilt, her tone turning apologetic. “I cannot.”

“Fine.” Gideon said, her voice all edges. “Fine. We fight.” She stormed ahead and drew the two-hander, flanking their squadron. Harrow fought to keep pace with her long stride. Around them, soldiers and beasts clashed, the air thick and buzzing with thalergy, and Harrow felt mad with the power that hummed beneath her hands. Hundreds, if not thousands of the creatures had been fallen by the first wave - Cohort soldiers numbered far less, but Harrow sensed an overwhelming number of human thalergetic signatures. Rivulets of blood ran from hulking beast bodies, pooled beneath fallen Cohort soldiers, crimson stains dappling their House colors.

Gideon fell easily into fight mode, parrying long, wicked claws that nearly cleaved one of their young necromancers in two. She pushed the creature off as it bared down on her - Harrow sent the constructs surging forward, and as the creature fell back, their bony hands wrapped hefted it onto its back. Gideon plunged the sword into its heart and it squealed, and when she turned to look at Harrow, eyes dark and wild, Harrow felt her heart lurch. Blood flecked Gideon’s cheek and face in little glistening spots, sweat shining her brow. She was breathing so heavily her chest was heaving, shallow, panicked breaths.

“Gideon,” Harrow whispered, and Gideon’s gaze was suddenly so full of hatred it startled her.

“ _ This  _ is the might of the Emperor,” Gideon snarled. “ _ This  _ is what we’ve trained for. So we’ll cut down the innocent creatures that lived on this planet for God knows how the fuck long, and we’ll do it with a smile on our faces, or we’ll die.” Harrow nodded. They were the words she’d wanted to hear from her cavalier, but they burned her from the inside out.

“We’ll figure it out, Gideon,” Harrow said. “I  _ know  _ this isn’t what we were expecting, but we have to figure it out when we’re back on the  _ Dominion. _ If we abandon them-” Gideon’s eyes slid to their squadron.

“Only to protect them,” she said. Harrow conceded, and the relief was written all over Gideon’s face. She bowed slightly, the crooked smile of hers tearing at the corner of her mouth, beneath those wild eyes.

“Then I will be your sword.”

Gideon rounded on a beast tearing at two of the soldiers; Harrow bored down on another, grimacing at the young necro beneath it, lifeless. Her constructs subdued the creature - but not after it bashed a couple to rubble - and she laid a hand on its stippled skin, caving the vertebrae of its neck in, crushing its windpipe. It heaved and shuddered, then fell still. Behind her, Gideon lopped off the monster’s arm, her sword easily finding the shoulder’s join and stripping it clean. It crashed to the ground, writhing, and she slit its throat in a smooth arc before rounding on another.

Morality aside, Gideon was something else altogether to watch in battle - moving like liquid, smooth and beautiful. Every arc of the sword was choreographed; every swing calculated and devastating. In all of their infinite strife, Harrow felt the same sensation she had when she’d met Gideon aboard the  _ Emperor’s Dominion _ all those weeks ago, heat rising to her cheeks, heart rate quickening. Gideon let out a feral shout as she speared another’s heart, using her other hand to shove the Cohort soldier out of the way of those gnashing teeth. This was Gideon in her element, sword in hand. This was Harrowhark’s salvation.

Or it was, at least, before the world rocked sideways and pain exploded in Harrow’s side; she clutched at it as a garbled squeal tore from her throat, the claws of the beast searing her skin. Her constructs dissolved to dust as her concentration snapped. She looked at its face, small beady eyes set into the sides of its skull, all black with a depth of intelligence. It regarded her for only a second, it’s teeth bared, slit-nostrils flaring. From somewhere far away she heard a very quiet, “Oh, fuck.”

Harrow raised a hand in an attempt to defend herself; the beast swatted it easily aside, and pain bloomed as her wrist seemed to bend back inhumanly far. It set a heavy, clawed hand on her chest, and Harrow managed only a thin whistling noise and it’s weight tore the air from her lungs. She struggled feebly against that hand, fingers pulling at it, but it was hard as stone. The creature growled gutturally and opened its mouth wide, rows of teeth glinting beneath a vast and foreign sky. Harrowhark surrendered herself to die; she mouthed a quick prayer and an apology for her failure.

From somewhere to her left came a shout of, “ _ Fuck!”  _ The pressure left Harrow’s chest as the creature wheeled around, but Gideon was there, her hands so tight around the sword that her knuckles were white. She parried a blow from the creature’s hand; Harrow tried to raise a hand to help defend, but her body would not obey. She instead layed there limply as Gideon used one of the stone plates on the creature’s back to heft herself on top, holding fast as it thrashed beneath her, before plunging the sword through the creature's back. It keeled over, blood spilling from it’s chest.

“Harrow,” Gideon choked, tossing the sword to the ground. Harrow tried to protest as the girl’s arms wrapped around her, but she felt so, so  _ fragile,  _ black spots blooming in her vision. She was vaguely aware of the sensation of blood tricking into her ear. 

Gideon brushed a lock of hair from her cheek, her strong hands all tender and soft. Harrowhark shuddered under her touch, gentle, wanting. In her twenty-two years of miserable life, she never could imagine someone in the entire bleak, rancid universe loving her. And yet by Gideon she was beheld like a light upon an ever-darkening sea. She gazed down at Harrow, that messy red crop of hair wet and tangled with sweat, yellow eyes wildly darting, full of naked terror as she lifted Harrowhark gently from the dirt. 

It was, for a single tortured moment, half on the edge of unconsciousness, that Harrowhark comprehended the atrocity she had committed; comprehended the dark and nebulous star the two of them had been hurtling toward since their first meeting aboard the ship. She raised a hand to Gideon’s cheek, and though the girl spoke some unintelligible sentence, Harrow did not comprehend the words over the roaring in her ears. Then she passed out.

When she awoke, the vast blackness of space stared back, its star-dappled vastness stretching on into some infinity. She noted the room: unfamiliar, though the flat white walls told her she was on a Cohort ship, cramped with medical supply boxes, scattered sheets of flimsy and surgical equipment. The room itself was empty; the gently glowing light above the small, nondescript door cowed to Harrow, and as she stood she realized in a flash of embarrassment she had been redressed. The blood-soaked cohort whites were in a neatly folded pile next to the bed; she now wore a crisp-feeling new set of whites. The wound at her side burned when she stood, but was not incapacitated; she noted, with some grim satisfaction, that she would do a better job of setting the bones later than whoever had tried. The flesh magician who had patched up her side had done a much better job - it stung and bruised, blooming shades of dark purple and blue, but the cuts were gone.

When she opened the door, she realized they were in the medical bay, and the lobby was empty aside from Gideon, whose head snapped up as the door slid open. She stood from her seat, that same haunted expression on her face. Wordlessly she bent and took Harrow, in her arms, those tightly muscled arms so gentle again - for her, only for her - and Harrow felt her heart kick up. She didn’t raise her hands, she didn’t move a muscle - though her brain was screaming to escape, to flinch away, her heart was stuttering and wanting  _ more.  _ She stood still as a frightened lamb until Gideon released her, the places where her arms had been burning like a brand. Her mind whirred, then clicked into place - she grabbed Gideon by the shirt and yanked her into the sickroom, slamming the button behind her. 

“ _ What happened after I passed out?”  _ She couldn’t keep the panicked tone from creeping in.

“I took down a couple more of the - er- things, and then I carried you to the ship. It was very cool and honorable of me, saving you.” She looked pleased. Harrow suppressed an eyeroll, if only because she  _ was  _ grateful to be alive. “You… they said you broke some ribs. One punctured your lung. Your wrist was fractured.” Gideon was almost comically wringing her hands now. “The mission was a success, the initial thanergy bloom was successful. All but one from the squadron we commanded survived but I- I wasn’t around for it all. I took you aboard the ship as soon as I knew they were safe.” 

The pity, the tenderness, it was all too much for Harrow. She felt the choking emotion welling up inside of her again; the final few moments of their conflict, that feeling of safety, of something else. Something that was not allowed for Harrowhark Nonagesimus. She swallowed.

“Thank you,” she said trimly. “I’m sorry I failed you. The bone adept they sent did a  _ terrible  _ job and I wouldn’t like you to be present when I fix their sloppy work, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Harrow-” Gideon started, but Harrowhark cut her off.

“Tomorrow.” She said, and Gideon turned slowly to the door, her hand hovering over the button.

“Harrowhark, I am  _ so  _ glad you’re alive.” 

And for some reason, that broke Harrow. She rushed forwards before she could stop herself, wrapping her thin arms around Gideon’s waist, pulling her as tightly to her own body as she could. Gideon froze, then leaned into the touch, and they stumbled slightly as she rotated under Harrow’s grasp, pressing Harrow’s face into her chest. They stood like that for a moment and Harrow realized she was shaking, really shaking, a tremor in her knees that left her feeling so weak she worried she would keel over again. She felt the heat on her face and grasped at Gideon’s back, tangling her fingers in the white fabric. Gideon was rigid as stone, and so warm; she smelled mostly clean, a trace of sweat and earth still on her skin. Harrow clung to her like a drowning man in an endless sea. It had all been too much. It hadn’t been enough. She let go, and Gideon looked down at her with a strange, soft expression, her pupils way too big, her eyes half-lidded.

“I am too,” Harrow said. “Thank you.” And she meant it.

They stood like that for a few precious, long moments; then Harrow’s self preservation kicked in, and her hands slowly slid from Gideon’s waist. She stepped back, but Gideon captured her cheeks in her hands, turning Harrow’s face up to meet her eyes. Harrow’s breath hitched; she felt dizzy under that smoldering gaze. Gently, so gently, Gideon pressed a kiss to her forehead, her lips barely brushing the skin. Harrow felt, with much shame, a small, mewling noise escape her throat. Then Gideon slipped through the door without a backwards glance. Harrow tended to her wounds.

It was, after some short hours and a knock on her door, that a person with a nondescript face handed her an injury release form stack. She plodded through them as quickly as possible, then rushed through the door. She did not know why her feet carried her to the First bunks instead of the Ninth, but she was desperate to find Gideon - to her disdain, the knock on the door proved fruitless, so she opened the door anyway, stumbled inside and collapsed in the nest of clothes that Gideon called a bed. It smelled the same way Gideon had smelled when she held Harrow earlier; she was ashamed but there was no one to see her so  _ fuck it,  _ she thought, as she buried her nose in the blankets, trying to imprint that smell on her brain _.  _ She curled up in a pile, mind buzzing with all that had happened.

The Empire was...wrong _.  _ To be a tool of destruction in the hand of it, to spread death across the galaxy was not what she’d signed up for. She imagined the souls of the generation of the Ninth that were inside of her tugging at her insides; felt their arms and hands and feet that had never been given a chance to grow pummeling her soul. To be the bringer of that destruction would be to use them for more violence - and violence for its own sake, for empirical expansion that in all of her years had not saved her house, was not  _ the greater good _ . It was at best misguided; at worst, evil. She thought of all of the soldiers mowed down in the field of that distant star, their lights burning low, their death feeding the soil of a planet that would soon be subjugated, the deaths of all those intelligent animals as they fought blindly against a menace they could not understand.

And Gideon, with her lion’s heart and her passion, her malice, her anger, as Harrowhawk cowed to that violence cut to her core; she thought again of Gideon’s lips brushing her forehead and flushed all over again. She would have cried if she could’ve, but it had never come easily to her. She felt twisted inside, like some kind of thickly woven thread that must be peeled apart and laid bare - she decided that when Gideon returned, she would tell her everything.

She may have slept or just lied there, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t have to wait long. When the door softly whirred and the light clicked on, Harrowhark stirred in Gideon’s sheets and saw a confused expression on her face.

“Harrow…?” Gideon said quietly. “I stopped by your quarters, you weren’t there- I’m not mad or anything, I was worried-”

“Sit,” Harrowhark said. Gideon obeyed as she always did, sitting so fast she practically collapsed on the floor at Harrow’s feet.

“I made you coffee,” she said quietly, raising a steaming cup in her hand. “I thought you’d be tired and you could, you know, use the energy after being super injured.” Harrow reached out and took the cup from her and realized she was  _ starving  _ as she sucked down some of the liquid in the cup, nearly burning her tongue.

“Thank you,” She said. Suddenly, it seemed very hard to say the words she’d told herself she would, to will them from her mouth. “I will tell you of my House.”

“Harrow, you don’t have to-”

“No, no.” She said. “I do.” She patted the bed beside her, and Gideon hesitantly pulled herself up at Harrow’s side, knees touching. “I’m sorry, you know. For everything.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Gideon said softly. Her eyes were trained hard on the floor.

“No,  _ sorry  _ is not enough for what I did to you. How I’ve treated you. I- just,” she felt the broken note in her voice, but for once, she did nothing to stop it’s hum. “I  _ have  _ to do this. I have to become a soldier, a commander,  _ something _ .”

“Why?” Gideon said.

“Because,” Harrow bit at her lip again, tasting blood. “Because the Ninth House is dying, and I am the last of us. I cannot bring them glory in life, I have accepted that. But our legacy may bring us glory in death.”

“Why you?” Harrow’s breath hitched in her throat. She steeled herself to say the words she had not said to anyone in her entire miserable existence aloud.

“I am the sum of two hundred sons and daughters of the Ninth,” she said finally. “My parents wished to ensure a necromantic heir. I am all that’s left.”

“They-” Gideon whispered, horror all over her face.

“Yes,” Harrow stared at the coffee in her hands, the muggy steam rolling up, hot on her chin. “I am the product of a genocide. To protect the Ninth, to protect the tomb that must never be opened.”

“What are you protecting?” Gideon said.

“I don’t know,” Harrow whispered. “I tried. For years. I passed all of the wards. But the final door I could not open; it requires the blood of someone I have never met. I never learned. I protect a tomb that may lie empty, I may never know what lies beyond the rock. I decided, instead, to live for those I know gave up their lives; to do right by the two hundred souls inside of me. But I am the last of my kind, and soon, there will be no one else to protect the tomb. I thought - I thought that some kind of glorious legacy would be enough to honor them. That when people thought of Ninth, they would think of us as more than a cult on a freezing rock. It was the least I could do.”

“Harrow…” Gideon’s voice trailed off, and Harrow felt her cheek was wet. With a start, she realized she was crying.

“I am an atrocity, Gideon,” the words came out broken-hearted, rushed. “I am a monster, a crime, a stain upon the universe. I am an indelible sin; I am the devil walking. I will never be anything more.”

“ _ Harrow,”  _ Gideon said, and Harrow let herself be wrapped again in her arms, buried her face in her chest. Her body rocked and heaved, though she cried no more; she just shook, there, the weight of the rock that had crushed her since birth weighing heavier than ever. 

Gideon pulled her head back from her chest, looking at her again with that soft expression, those dilated pupils, mouth slightly open. Harrow felt her breath hitch as Gideon leaned into her again. She stopped before their lips brushed; Gideon’s hand was heavy, warm on the back of Harrow’s head, and her heart was roaring in her ears. But they were  _ so  _ close. Without thinking, Harrow pulled Gideon forward, and their mouths brushed for only a second; Gideon’s hand slid to Harrowhark’s cheek, cupping her face. The warmth of her breath danced across Harrow’s cheeks. It was quick, gentle, but when she pulled away, she saw Gideon’s cheeks were flushed darkly, and her brow shone with a thin layer of sweat.

“Leave me, Gideon,” Harrowhark mumbled. “Leave me to die here, you wretch. You imbecile. You have beheld me like a sacred thing, and I’ve deceived you into loving me.”

“You haven’t  _ deceived  _ me, Harrow,” Gideon said softly. “None of that was  _ your  _ fault. You’ve been made to carry this burden your whole life, and you didn’t even choose it. I’m so sorry Harrow. You didn’t deserve any of that.”

Harrow said nothing else; she didn’t need to. She simply hooked a leg over Gideon’s thighs, pulled herself into her lap, wrapped her arms around her neck and clung to her as tightly as she could. She felt her fingernails digging into the skin beneath her uniform, and felt Gideon’s heart jackhammering against her ear, mirroring her own. She looked up, nearly panting, and Gideon dragged a thumb across Harrow’s cheek to wipe the wetness from it. Harrow kissed her again; more softly, tenderly, and the way Gideon hummed against her lips, pressing a hand softly to her back, felt like something Harrow had never deserved to know altogether.

“Gid-” Harrow started, but Gideon cut her off without another kiss, moving to her jaw, then her throat. Harrow ran her arms over the girl’s back; they fell forward, Gideon’s elbows on either side of Harrow’s head, hands cradling the back of her neck, tangled in Harrow’s hair. Gideon tucked her head neatly beneath the crook of Harrow’s jaw, the firm angle of her nose pressing beneath her ear. Gideon was so much heavier than Harrow; she took care not to crush her, but the lengths of their bodies pressed together was doing things to Harrow she had previously never considered possible.

“Harrowhark, do you know how long I’ve wanted this?” Gideon said suddenly, shifting to meet Harrow’s eyes. Being regarded under her gaze was like being held under a microscope. Those eyes bore into her soul. “You don’t, I know you don’t. It’s longer than you could ever know.” 

She kissed Harrow again, softly still, then deeper, biting at her lips. Harrow made a high, whining noise as she opened her mouth; this time, she was past the point of being embarrassed by it. Gideon nipped at her neck, running her tongue over the soft skin, Harrow’s throat worked as she struggled to keep her eyes open.

They laid there, then, the fluorescent light burning at Harrow’s eyelids, her hands running lazily, softly through Gideon’s hair.

“We can get out of here,” Gideon said quietly, after a time. “We can go together. We can’t fix it, but we don’t have to be a part of it.”

“I can’t,” Harrow said, but the words were hollow to her ears. She wanted nothing more.

“God, I know you can’t, but I wish you could,” Gideon laughed, syrupy, tired, sad. “God, Harrow, you don’t even know. I wish this was how it happened.”

The lights buzzed; the abyssal space outside was silent. But the river roared.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to hear the song that inspired this fic, go listen to Violent Sun by Everything Everything, and then tell me if you also think it's an HtN anthem. Also, this is my first time ever writing a complete fanfic, so be nice to me. Haha


End file.
